Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/260

252 252 THE POKTRAIT OF A LADY. saw a gentleman a gentleman who was not Kalph come back to say that the excavations were a bore. This personage was startled as she was startled ; he stood there, smiling a little, blushing a good deal, and raising his hat. " Lord Warburton ! " Isabel exclaimed, getting up. " I had no idea it was you," he said. " I turned that corner and came upon you." Isabel looked about her. " I am alone, but my companions have just left me. My cousin is gone to look at the digging over there." " Ah yes ; I see." And Lord Warburton's eyes wandered vaguely in the direction Isabel had indicated. He stood firmly before her ; he had stopped smiling ; he folded his arms with a kind of deliberation. " Don't let me disturb you," he went on, looking at her dejected pillar. " I am afraid you are tired." " Yes, I am rather tired." She hesitated a moment, and then she sat down. " But don't let me interrupt you," she added. " Oh dear, I am quite alone, I have nothing on earth to do. I had no idea you were in Rome. I have just come from the East. I am only passing through." "" You have been making a long journey," said Isabel, who had learned from Ralph that Lord Warburton was absent from England. " Yes, I came abroad for six months soon after I saw you last. I have been in Turkey and Asia Minor ; I came the other day from Athens." He spoke with visible embarrassment ; this unexpected meeting caused him an emotion he was unable to conceal. He looked at Isabel a moment, and then he said, abruptly " Do you wish me to leave you, or will you let me stay a little ?". She looked up at him, gently. " I don't wish you to leave me, Lord Warburton ; I am very glad to see you." " Thank you for saying that. May I sit down ? " The fluted shaft on which Isabel had taken her seat would have afforded a resting-place to several persons, and there was plenty of room even for a highly-developed Englishman. This fine specimen of that great class seated himself near our young lady, and in the course of five minutes he had asked her several questions, taken rather at random, and of which, as he asked some of them twice over, he apparently did not always heed the answer; had given her, too, some information about himself which was not wasted upon her calmer feminine sense. Lord Warburton, though he tried hard to seem easy, was agitated ;